I heard from an outside (which is what people say when they’re nosy, but don’t want to appear nosy), but primary source, that a friend of mine prefers a variation of sex that’s “too rough”.

I haven’t brought it up to him, mostly because that wasn’t my business in the first place. Let’s be clear. So long as it is consensual, and everyone is old enough to sign their own permission slips for field trips, I truly and utterly could not give fewer fucks.

My friend is attractive. Perfectly symmetrical face shape, defined jaw, all of those small details science and media favor and convince us are somehow important factors in relationship compatibility. It is also 2018. A year in which everyone is beautiful on the surface but harboring shame that none of us will talk about openly.

Which is to say, I’m sure he’ll be able to find some other 20-something willing to be slapped violently and perhaps pissed on as the two of them come (not finished) closer to uncovering dark parts of themselves they need to heal, or express, or both.

I only know so much about my friends sexual practices from conversations. I know he doesn’t see a reason to put his dildos away when I come (I just love to pause right after typing that) over. He knows that getting caught writing erotica at 13 years old means that I’m wildly secretive about anything sexual I do, and never, ever mention people I’m sexually involved with.

I know he gets bored of men after two solid months, max.
He knows my ideal ‘type’ has consistently been tall even though I claim to only choose ‘based on personality’

which…yeah……is mostly bullshit, but also kinda true….technically I’m paying attention to the personalities of people taller than 6’3.

He knows being anally penetrated is a ministry some are called to, and I know it’s important to walk in my unique calling, which definitely isn’t that.

I say this to say we know quite a bit about one another sexually despite never having been sexually involved before.

What I’ve never expected to happen was to overhear a yelp review from one of his previous sexual partners; a mutual friend. And let’s specify what type of mutuality:

If I saw this person while running errands, I’d smile and wave, but I definitely wouldn’t stop anything I’m doing to make a conversation. I cannot tell you this mutual friend’s last name or backstory. In fact, the ‘friend’ in ‘mutual friend’ is a misnomer. We are mutual. We happen to know a few similar people.

So what is my responsibility here? Perhaps I should go back to my friend and just casually let him know that some boy whose cheeks he’s clapped and name I can’t all the way recall might need a little bit more lube than they’ve been using.

I should do this in the name of friendship. It is my duty, nay, responsibility to the community, to remind him that while he’s pounding these boys down and making them feel all the things they’ve shut down due to probably unresolved childhood trauma, he should, even occasionally, ask his partner if this is working.

I settle on a close option.

I figure everyone’s a damn adult. If you don’t like the way your booty hole feels three days after hitting my friend up on a phone app suggesting you’ll ‘find friends in your area’ but really end up sucking local dick on your block, say something.

Use your people words.

If it hurts, say it hurts, say it right then, and say it to his face.

Everybody wanna be a freak. Everybody wanna be grown. Nobody wanna speak up for themselves.

As a preteen of the earlier part of the new millenium, he had relearned that dolls weren’t for girls. These plastic playthings were packed with harmful messages (both overt and covert) that had the capacity to ruin the divinity of womanhood.

As a functioning adult casually browsing crap television in 2018, he learned that dolls were for both girls and/or boys and/or any of the genders that loosely existed between those binaries – which were in no way static, but fluid, and the pronouns associated with said genders should be asked prior to addressing said person(s) in an effort to not invalidate said people(s).

As a grown person paying rent and minding his own black ass business, he figured the last thing he needed was media explaining who should do what about anything, and maybe we should stop prescribing shit to genders in the first place and chill out with the gender revolutions meant to appear inclusive but really just sell us more shit we barely needed to begin with.

You might be surprised how cognitive people are with very little assistance or interruption and might be capable enough all on their own to decide if shit works for them.

Like maybe he just started exploring this thing. Maybe he waited long enough for his parents to croak and kids to get grown and stop calling. Some people do that, and I don’t judge one way or another. It’s not really much my business.

“You sure got a lot of holes in them jeans..” he groveled. Took me a minute to figure out he was being light-hearted. I just smiled nervously with my face half cringed until I was sure.

I feel well past the age of being openly hit on by men that don’t mean me no good. That would have worked much better on a version of me that wasn’t even twenty yet; Back when I was watery eyed and glad that anyone, anyone at all, stopped to make a conversation with my gangly self, too dark, and too weird to hit on all out in the open.

Damn near thirty, now. You missed your chance. I’m out here liking me and shit. Know damn well that I ain’t got what folks like, but the shit I got is still some good shit. Great shit even. This shit got me through some stuff, and maybe I’m working with a little bias, but I think I’ve got the best damn shit I’ve ever seen.

So there I am rough shaved, in yet another button down, and a pair of jeans I’ve got to answer for anytime I show up in front of anyone’s elders, pair of plaid boxers showing underneath the distress of my denim, also revealing hairy brown legs, I don’t shave, ’cause I don’t care.

I’m still there, half-smiling and reading his intentions forwards, backwards, upside down and inside out. Ain’t nothing wrong with watching if he wanna watch – I’m not gonna lie, I don’t mind the watching – even feels a little nice.

His eyes scan me over, and over before he asks my name.

and I tell him.

even give him my real name.

He tells me his. I repeat it just so he has the memory of me saying it. He can do what he likes with that however he wants to. I don’t mind it none.

He asks me where I’m from. I tell him where I’m from.

He tells me where he’s from. Small town, somewhere in North Carolina. It’s someplace I ain’t ever been, and someplace I won’t ever go. He tells me about all the boys there, good ole’ southern boys, work hard, play hard too, even though they play a little rough.

He laughs at his own joke. I laugh at him laughing at his own joke. He’s alright.

Glasses sliding down his nose, and khakis a size or so too big. I can’t get a solid read as to what his intentions might be, so I can’t say he’s doing anything wrong. Not like I’d have any idea what I’d do if he did start to do anything wrong. I’m not even sure what actions would qualify as doing something wrong. I just know wrong when I see it.

He asks me for my number. Right there in the fruit aisle of the grocery store. Talks about wanting to talk over dinner. I’m a people person in the most general way, and I don’t have any reason to not give him my number.

and I don’t have any reason to not consider a dinner.
and I don’t have any reason to not consider a conversation.

So I do it.

Even tell him I’ll wear better jeans.
He tells me these are perfectly fine.

If you wanted this to be something sugary and sweet you could have called a lover, but you didn’t. You called me in the middle of the night knowing that I was going to cancel a whole night’s rest, and fuck up my entire tomorrow in advance.

When I get there, we share a cigarette.
He don’t waste much time stripping down from work clothes. Unlatches his shoes, unzips his trousers. He’s anything but shy and parts of him half-hang out of his underclothes, finally relaxed and free after a long ass day where ain’t nobody said thank you, where ain’t nobody asked our black ass opinions. Folks don’t even look you in the eye.

He says he doesn’t care much. He shows up when he’s supposed to, and clocks out when he’s done. He knows how to get by.

I’m mouthy. I’ve been mouthy and I’ll be mouthy until my time here on this earth is about done and that’ll probably be the reason I leave. Too much mouth for the job,

but just enough for him.

He knows better than to listen too carefully when I fake complain about getting his call after midnight. He smiles while I rant and pulls one more cigarette from the pack and lights it with a loose match he retrieves from his trouser pocket. We share this one too.

He only tells me about his day if I ask specifics, and he only answers in two or three words at a time if he has to.

What he will do is let me talk endlessly about whatever the hell I’d like ’cause I’m the one who left my apartment after midnight. and even if he lays around almost dressed, he never rushes me into anything, even though we both work early tomorrow.

I think he’d be alright if I just came by to smoke all of his cigarettes, so long as I looked him in the eye and made him feel like a person while I did it. Let him know I see him there looking good and smelling like work.

Remind him I know his middle name, and that I know he ain’t really moving back to where he came from.

He ain’t going back to dating yellow girls from good families and smiling pretty when they talk about children’s names.

Ain’t nothing back there.

and shit, not much here either.

But at least here, for just a couple hours after we smoke and do grown things men do, but never with each other, he feels like somebody,

Without warning, he pulls out what he’s packing beneath his faded boxer briefs.
Long and thick, half-hard;he kinda thought this out, but not really.

But what the fuck are you gonna do? Ask him to put it away? Leave?
You didn’t come here to watch this damn movie, no way.

You pull yours out too.

Play with it a bit.
Get it to stiffen up.

Watch him play with his and he watches you play around with yours.
Soon, he’ll play around with yours and you’ll watch him as you play around with his.

It’s all light stuff, nothing you couldn’t have don’e yourself at home, but there you are , and here he is, and in what seems like a split second, and an assertion instead of permission, he wraps his eager lips over your almost hardened shaft.

And you just go with it.

You didn’t really want it but who the fuck turns down head?
There are other things you could have been doing right now, this isn’t your best use of time. While he’s there salivating on your semi-excited parts, you consider those things.

There’s homework you’re behind on.
There’s a test you wont be prepared for.
You compare this head to the kind you got back when you were with what’s-her-name. She was good, but you weren’t feeling it.

And so you thought you should try it with guys.

Not that you’re gay or anything, fuck that, not that there’s anything wrong with it, you just aren’t.

You’re figuring shit out. We all are.

And you don’t like guys, you just like the sex, and not this sex specifically, but you’re sure you’d find someone, some guy even, to have the sex you’d like.

A year or so before what’s-her-name, it could have happened. You found a guy, didn’t know him well, exchanged messages, and pictures. He was lowkey, but cute – nice smile, good features, you remember him? You two texted everyday for a week and a half. You thought this made sense. you wouldn’t marry him or nothing. The two of you could just stay low and build together. Keep the world out of your business.

By the second week, the texts stop coming in as fast and by the third, you weren’t texting at all.

You texted him when you relationship with what’s-her-name fell through; that shit wasn’t gonna last anyway.

He didn’t respond to your text.
You text again a week later.
Nothing, still.
You text him a month after that.
Not a goddam thing.

You’re confused as hell, making sense of shit as best as you can. What the fuck happened? The two of you hadn’t even fucked yet.

So you try and fuck everything else. You fuck anyone who responds and always plan it before the end of the week.

And so there you are, on someone’s raggedy ass couch. Their head bobbing up and down between your legs.

The ones that kinda waddle when they walk, or take a little extra time putting their jeans back on in the morning, right before they go wherever the hell they came from.

Prolly, hell.

Sent here just to tempt me in mine own life. Same way Lucifer told Jesus all the kingdoms could be his if he would just bow unto Satan, These boys – thighs wide and edible – look you right in the eye and tell you, “all of this can be yours if you just bow to me,”

and I do.

I absolutely do.

They ain’t even finish that sentence all the way before I give em’ half of every damn thing I got, hoping for a fraction of what they’re working with; hoping to feel the weight of their world on my shoulders.

Ain’t nothing like a thick boy.

They hug better.

More to hold onto when the world gets cold.

They eat good, and cook good, and can give you a mouthful if you’d just ask em’ nicely..

Thick ones are the freaky ones too, but you ain’t heard it from me. Usually raised good and picked on growing up, but ready to be loved right, and wrong, and fast, and good.

You’ve got to treat thick boys right.

’cause we don’t say it a lot, ’cause folks will look at you funny, but deep down, everyone wants a thick boy.

This is me minding my damn business in someone’s mountains. We all heal differently.

I’m not doing a recap on the year. You lived through 2017. You already know what’s up. Let’s move right along.

I did take a chance and submitted my work into a (queer) magazine with hopes of getting things published. Guess who the fuck got his first rejection letter? Yuuup.

I don’t get em’ often, so anytime I do get one the event becomes a national (and mostly personal) travesty.

I’m not gonna be that sour loser who just believes his work is the best. I think “best” is entirely relative. Here’s what I know:

I know I love what I do, and after the first night of receiving the rejection letter I stayed up and plotted new ways to do the work that I know I love doing.

I didn’t “come out” so that I could hold hands with some boy who didn’t love me or himself. Fuck that shit.

I came out and left the world I knew so I could do this work I couldn’t let the thick layer of shame prevail when I wrote about life and sexuality. I’ve been writing about love and life and sex and all those things in between since 2011, and I had been writing for hobby years before that.

I love creating shit that is queer, and brown, and sexual, and thoughtful, and funny, and real, even if it’s absolutely wrong. People don’t do real shit anymore. Some mornings I’m up before the sun, designing new ways to do the work I love. I’m studying as many masters as I can, ingesting as many books, talks, podcasts and etc. as time allows.

I love the work I get to do with my time alive.

So when failure hit, it shook me all the way the fuck up.

I skipped sleeping. I hardly ate. I’m that kind of crazy.
A friend of mine insisted I come out to visit her in Colorado.

I went to unclog, if you will. See some mountains, breath some rarefied air. Didn’t smoke legalized marijuana. I don’t smoke. Visited book stores. Reminded myself the world is absolutely mesmerizing as it is. I am too. I drank a bunch. I threw up a dozen times on the flight back. It was excellent.

I have returned, and I look forward to putting out even more work and finding even more ways to do work that I thoroughly enjoy.

I appreciate all the folks who keep up with (or accidentally stumble into) the work I produce. I hope everyone manages to find work in this life that they are willing to fail at and still show up to do the next morning.

It might not be glamorous, but it’s real. May you all go do some real shit.

On the top shelf.
In a shoe box for a brand of shoes he’s never even heard of, underneath a bunch on clip-on earrings, some even the size of a toddlers fist, organized in no type of way

That’s where Bernard’s mamma kept those letters from some man in someone’s prison claiming that he’s innocent and claiming that he loves her and can’t wait until they see each other.

Bernard usually skips over he first couple lines, sometimes even the first page-or-so; it’s all sentimental stuff, total bullshit. Kids, and especially the sneaky ones, have a fine-tuned bullshit detector. They lose it with time and enough pat conversations, and later, sterile relationships, or worse, loveless marriages, but sneaky kids can spot some bullshit in no time. To Bernard, most of this prisoners whole first page of his most recent letter was bullshit.

I just want to hold you in my arms, was one reoccurring line.I want to love you like you’ve never been loved was another unspecific one.Run my hands in your hair, he included for romantic measure like Bernard’s mama ain’t wear a whole damn wig.

The good parts always started after the intense scribble of three letters written on the yellow office paper so hard, the pen could have gone right through to the other side,

“XXX” it read and underneath these three letters was when it all got good and real.

Lines about the way she taste like vanilla between her legs, and how he wanted to spend all night sampling her flavors.

The prisoner had to be hung real nice they way he bragged about his own dick, which was as often as he could. In some lines, he talked about her riding on it, sucking on it, like a lollipop (all his words), having it between her titties so he could stroke himself between her.

If Bernard could infer a damn thing about thing letter it was that prison makes you downright freaky.

All this talk of how this prisoner wanted a wet tongue to play around in his hole, and how he’d only be sure to return the favor (a felon and a gentleman, he claimed). The way he begged Bernard’s mother to drip all of her juices onto him, or spank him, not too hard, but not too soft neither; teach him a lesson that the correction facility couldn’t.

It was a lot for Bernard to envision. His mother, a God-fearing and resilient alto of Bethesda AME church. The same woman who knew any scripture involving obedience by heart, also knew exactly how to make grown men beg.

Bernard didn’t even bother envisioning his mother taking part in the vicious and voracious sexual acts. He couldn’t even wrap his mind around the idea that his own mother might be a woman who was wanted. The same woman who wore oversized t-shirts around the apartment, the same woman who claimed God provided for all things, was the same woman a man wanted to undress, explore deep, and be able to taste off his fingertips the next morning.

Bernard’s mother wasn’t just a mother. She was also a woman who ran through a man’s mind and in his fantasies.

Knowing better than to ever speak of it, he folded the pale yellow papers and placed it into the box beneath the pile of earrings. He’d return the following month to see if there might be a new one – advances in this sort of love.

Bernard never returned for the purpose of being aroused. Although the letters helped him work on his dirty vocabulary when he and the other boys talked about sex as best as boys new to puberty could.

He read for evidence that his mother, holy and plain as she was, was still a woman.

I almost religiously start and end every day drawing erotic comics or illustrations.

How good am I? ehhhhh, results vary.
Am I having an excellent time? Oh, absolutely.

There is no pressure to try to turn any of this into anything in particular.
I am a lover of comics and cartoons, and my favorite part of adulthood is being grown enough to sit in my damn apartment that I am paying rent for and drawing some erotic shit.

No matter how difficult the day might attempt to be, I can look life in the face, smile at it and let it know that at about 9:00pm, I will be continuing a series of drawings inspired by fine ass black men and bazooka joe bubble gum cartoons and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Starting here also makes the day more tolerable. It’s an inexpensive habit compared to, say, crack cocaine. I don’t start the day with a drink, I don’t start with a cigarette, I get a cup of coffee, I sit my ass down and I draw some illustrations.

It keeps me sane.
It also keeps me from fucking with the wrong dudes. Ain’t no man prettier than anything I can learn to draw, and with enough practice, I can make these men do damn near whatever I want, and hint: nobody is safe.

Cute guy from astrology class inspired a few drawings.
So did the guy who sat in front of me for a few English classes. So handsome, so brown, perfectly black nose, cute butt. I stare when he tells me about a new tattoo he got, flexing his printed bicep, showing me a new piece on his brown abs.

He knows exactly what he’s doing. I like this. Keep it up.

I will go back to my apartment. Light a candle I paid too much for, but still felt necessary. Sharpen my pencil (not a euphemism, I will literally sharpen a pencil. I will not masturbate). I will relive him however I want. Always erotic, never explicit.

I have exactly what I want in this one wild life.
I don’t actually need him. I don’t want to hear him talk about how he’s finishing his tattoos with with his student loans. I don’t want to watch him chew with his mouth open over a fancy dinner. I’ll take my moment. That’s all I need; one moment.

I’ll handle the rest tonight or tomorrow morning.

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The Young Plum

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These are the very grown adventures of the Young Plum. I feel like this is a great place to remind you that this site might not be "safe for work"...then again, I have NO idea what you do for a living, so it's your call.

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